Snowden’s Revealing Tweet Exposes Exactly What Our TV’s Are Doing To Us

Four years ago, Edward Snowden accomplished one of the most significant intelligence leaks in U.S. history, confirming to the world that the government really does spy on you. Two years later, Samsung casually warned the public that their Smart TVs could record their living room banter.

Now, even if you’re alone in a room, if that room contains a laptop, computer, or Smart TV, it’s possible that someone out there is listening to you, and even watching you. The worst part? You wouldn’t even know.

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A new technology called TVision Insights was recently launched, allowing companies to monitor TV watchers’ viewing habits. This means that they can literally watch you as you watch TV, and the technology even records data on where your eyes are looking, when you’re distracted, and what emotions you’re conveying.

How TVision Insights Watches You Watch TV

I first came across the technology when Edward Snowden tweeted the following image on February 26, 2017.

As you can see, not only can the companies watch you watch TV, but the technology is intelligent enough to pick up on your facial expression, engagement level, and other significant data. This information has provided insight into not only what shows people watch the most or are the most engaged in, but what commercials they prefer to watch as well.

TVision was co-founded by Dan Schiffman and one of his classmates from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Through the installation of a Microsoft Kinect device, most often used for Xbox video games, on top of TVs, TVision tracks the movement of people’s eyes in relation to the TV. The device can then record even tiny shifts from everyone in the room, and then the company matches the movements to what they’re watching.

The device’s sensors can record minute shifts in all of the people in the room. The company then matches those viewing patterns to shows and commercials using technology that listens to what is being broadcast on the TV.

Since the technology is still very new, it’s currently being voluntarily tested on 7,500 people in the Boston, Chicago, and Dallas-Fort Worth areas (source).

Obviously there are privacy concerns here. The company states that they aren’t storing any images or video footage, and it’s only a voluntary installation, at least for now. But we’ve already seen companies and the U.S. government abuse similar software to spy on us.

How can we guarantee this information won’t be publicized or sold to corporations or the government, since that’s already happened in the past? Where do we draw the line between wanting the latest technical gadgets and wanting to secure our privacy? Is it even possible to have both anymore?

Your TV Could Be Watching You Already

This isn’t the first example of surveillance through TVs, and it probably won’t be the last. In early 2015, Samsung released a statement warning customers that their Smart TVs were capable of listening to and recording conversations.

These TVs have voice recognition software, but this fancy piece of technology comes at a price, and that price is a complete and utter violation of privacy. Samsung actually warned its customers not to have important conversations or disclose personal information in front of their Smart TVs because the audio can be recorded and then transmitted to unidentified third parties.

Samsung’s privacy policy in regards to the TV actually reads: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.”

You can read more about the Samsung controversy in our CE article here.

Vizio TVs were also found to record people, but the company had to pay $2.2 million to settle charges for collecting and selling footage from millions of TVs without the knowledge or consent of its viewers. This is a pretty fair settlement given the fact that they had sold 11 million of these smart TVs. One can only imagine how many people were directly affected by this.

The software, Smart Interactivity, was marketed as a feature that “enables program offers and suggestions” for users. However, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Vizio didn’t actually offer any of these programs or suggestions for more than two years after being sold. The FTC suit, which was filed alongside the Attorney General of New Jersey and the Director of the State’s Division of Consumer Affairs, claimed that Vizio and its subsidiary, Inscape Services, sold data to third parties (source).

The data collected was able to show what programs and commercials people watched, and when. It could also measure the effectiveness of advertisements, as it would use the IP address attached to all of the internet-connected technological devices in your home to see if you recently searched for anything in regards to that commercial. For example, if you watched a McDonald’s commercial and then ordered McDonald’s on your phone, the software would pick up on that and confirm that the commercial was successful. The software can also do this in reverse, so if you see an ad online for a cool show and then you decide to watch it after, the software would pick up on that, too. The software could also target ads to people on their other devices, like phones or laptops, based on what they just watched on TV.

Although Vizio never publicly identified the companies they sold their data to, the FTC claimed that it included personal information like “sex, age, income, marital status, household size, education, homeownership and household value” (source).

How Do We Take Back Our Privacy?

If you own a Smart TV, don’t stress too much! There are ways to opt out of these features (although who knows if this is guaranteed, but it’s certainly worth a shot). Just do a quick Google search and you can find out how to opt out of Vizio and Samsung Smart TVs, if not more.

It’s well-known now that laptop cameras and microphones are easy targets for hackers, particularly if those hackers are U.S. government agencies, as they can be activated remotely (and you may not even know it because that little green light next to your camera won’t necessarily turn on).

The entire CE office tapes over their laptop cameras in order to prevent anyone from potentially spying on us. Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbergtapes over his laptop camera and microphone as an easy defence against people spying on him. I encourage you to do the same!

The reality is that we live in a world where everything is recorded and privacy isn’t always a choice anymore. There are little things here and there that we can do to avoid being taped or listened to, but that seems to be getting more and more difficult. We live in a technologically driven world, so it’s crucial that we voice our opinions and fight for our privacy. Even if you feel like you don’t have anything to hide, you should still have the right to do so!

What Do We Do In The Face Of Oppression?

In Brief

Tensions around the world have reached a boiling point it seems. People, from different backgrounds and countries have had enough of oppression and corrupt systems are being pushed to the brink.

Reflect On:

Is it time humanity rises up beyond the need for a ruling elite to call the shots in their lives?

The past few weeks I have not even had a clear idea as to what to even say about the state of the world. I get feelings and explore them, but what I’m observing is often unclear and points to a society that is having a multitude of issues surface at once. Most of the time, I feel like things just need to play out as they are, as opposed to going back to “normal.” Things being “normal” keeps us blind to a society built to oppress the masses, and humanity has more than enough of normal to know we don’t thrive in “normal” – we simply survive. Do we want to simply survive or do we want to thrive? It’s time to face some stuff we have been avoiding about ourselves for a long time.

When COVID-19 struck, it had all the hallmarks of an event being blown up by media and government to push forth agendas. False and ever-changing numbers, retractions that go unnoticed by the public, fear propaganda, censorship of experts with a different narrative, and so on. The whole event was one big attempt to use a virus not much different than the flu to bring about things in our world that don’t truly serve the public, but that instead serve the elite who own and control society.

Amongst COVID comes the senseless killing of a man by police officers. When George Floyd’s name began hitting the news cycle it was a sad moment as yet again another human dies at the hands of people that are supposedly there to protect people. The video evidence is clear, the public servant killed a man through the use of force, regardless of how many times Floyd said “I can’t breathe.”

Yet again, I found myself sifting through the never-ending differences of opinions and ideas as to what is happening, what happened, who is to blame, and what should happen from here on out. I’ve listened to videos from people all over the place, trying to get a clear idea as to what people are feeling so as to make sense of what solutions can be brought to the table. My passion in life is to help bring change to this world, change that starts within each of us. In that process, I find it important to get clear on issues so that we can get clear on what actions we can take.

One of the worst things we can do when trying to solve a problem that exists is take actions we think are helping when in fact they are not. This causes us to stop looking for solutions as we think we have already found it. Why it has taken me so long to figure out what to say is because I can’t get a clear idea within myself, or from the many, many voices I have listened to on this issue.

I see trends starting, the black screen on Instagram for example, where we stand in silence, apparently in unity, but is this solving anything? I don’t doubt that people’s intentions are beautiful, I question whether we are simply doing something that is trendy or whether we are once again staying silent while people’s voices should be heard. It reminds me of voting in our current modern times… Voting is being silent while you believe your voice is heard. Non-compliance, on an organized and collective level, is how your voice gets heard.

As an organizer on the ground in Oakland. I don’t need y’all Blacking out IGs. I need you reposting our asks of the community. I need you reposting our words and politics. Listen to us who on the ground doing the work. #BlackOutTuesday

One thing I’ve learned over the years doing the work I do is that current events are often not simple to explain. Sometimes there are details that go untold, get intentionally left out, politics that get in the way, social engineering involvement, etc. And the way we hear about these issues from mainstream media is highly calculated. The same people that are piling bricks at the protest sites during these recent protests are likely the same people pushing racial divides through mainstream media. They want the public to look dangerous and out of control. They want to push already tense emotions into a state of rage so that people act out and it calls in the need for more control and crackdowns. This is how an oppressive infrastructure of rule functions.

But don’t think this is the first time objects have been laid at a protest site to cause violence, it’s a common tool used in protests all around the world. When the G20 was in Toronto, I was covering it as a journalist. I had my camera and was positioned at the front lines of the protest. Since I was about 100 meters away from the front lines to get a full shot, I was further down the road and could see how police were preparing for the coming crowds.

Police backed off, they parked cars in the middle of streets set up for a photoshoot. They had plain-clothed, mask-wearing people amongst them. The same people that ran into the crowds, destroyed business, smashed police cars, lit them on fire, and then ran back behind police lines safely. At the G20 summit in Toronto, the police stoked the violence they created it and they took part it in – OTHER OFFICERS KNEW and went along with it.

What does this tell you about the relationship police have with the communities they are supposed to protect? Are they united with them? Or united with someone else? Who are they united with? Why do governments do nothing to change this? What does that say about the actual relationship government has with people? Does it show they truly work in the favor of the people? Does it show they are providing a society where people can thrive? Why do we support such an oppressive society?

Why is it that in the US, 99% of cases where police kill someone, they go uncharged? It doesn’t matter if the dead person is black white, brown, yellow, or green, they aren’t charged. Why?

Extremely similar to the case of George Floyd in almost every detail is the story of Tony Timpa, one most people don’t know anything about. Tony called 911 for help when he was having a reaction to drugs. Released footage from Dallas police shows police officers mocking Timpa while he is handcuffed and while one officer has a knee on his back for 14 minutes. As Timpa struggles to live, the officers make fun of Timpa’s repeated cries for help. Timpa said he couldn’t breathe and felt they were going to kill him. He pleaded more than 30 times. Eventually, one officer notes that he appears to be “out cold.” They then joke that he’s merely asleep and try to wake him: “It’s time for school. Wake up!” One officer mimics a teen saying: “I don’t want to go to school! Five more minutes, Mom!” Tony dies, and even when that is confirmed, the cops are still laughing as if his death was a joke.

Timpa’s story is strikingly similar to Floyd’s. Non-dangerous men are met by police, they are posing no threat to police, they are then murdered by police while all police around don’t seem to care.

Similar to Floyd’s case and others, in Timpa’s case we saw the city of Dallas and the Dallas County officials fight for months so the footage would not be released to the public. Eventually, the records came out. The three officers involved, Kevin Mansell, Danny Vasquez, and Dustin Dillard, were indicted by a grand jury in 2017 on charges of misdemeanor deadly conduct, three months after media began publishing investigations into Timpa’s death.

Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot then dismissed charges on all three officers. They each only received a few months of administrative leave.

Tony Timpa is a white male.

I’m not telling you about this because he was white, I’m telling you about this because we have to ask why we don’t hear about these things when they are not politically useful for elites to create a divide. Hundreds of non-black Americans are killed every year and no justice is served. Why were the police protected? Why wasn’t this a huge story? Why did the police try to hide what they did?

We have an epidemic of police brutality, black people more affected, but everyone affected, and yet we are unclear how to stop it. I do not think it’s a good thing that black people have to feel unsafe in their own city because of what police might do. Racist tendencies on the police force should be weeded out by removing those officers. In situations that are life and death, we can’t take chances. But if I’m being perfectly honest, I can’t say that I feel safe with police either. Nor do I trust government who is constantly working to oppress its people. I’ve had many run ins with cops in my day, never have I committed a crime, and only once or twice were those run ins a positive experience. I’ve witnessed innocent people be beat up and taken to jail by police, why? Still to this day I don’t know.

It’s true that police are not running around hunting down citizens to do bad things to, but there is still way too much injustice taking place towards citizens, and we can’t keep turning a blind eye.

We must continue to speak out on racism and help others understand their ways aren’t supporting a loving community. We must begin to recognize the even bigger picture in that we live in a society that is socially engineered to keep us divided and enslaved to a ruling elite. This elite is who police protect. This elite doesn’t want people to see them, doesn’t want people to unite snd move beyond the dynamic of giving our power to them while thinking others in society are our enemies.

The statistics in the US show that police are killing large numbers of people from all races, yet we only hear of stories that fuel racial divide. Why? These killings are all going on without ay accountability, why? We get coaxed into focusing heavily on issues that will divide us by class, race, gender, and so forth – all in effect making it so we cannot unite.

Our company, CE, who has been reporting on the actions of this ruling elite ad attempting to unite people through love and action for over 11 years has been silenced, kicked off of platforms, defamed and has had our revenue cut by over a million dollars per year. The attack on our company by deep state-aligned platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube ad Google has taken our team from 14 down to 3. That’s how much power goes into silencing voices that go against the divisive forces that enslave and oppress us all because we do not come together, unite and move into non-compliance with their systems. We instead ask their systems for justice. How does this make any sense?

It’s time for a new approach, a new story.

Neutrality Is Key

People confuse this a lot. they often feel neutrality means you don’t stand for something, or neutrality means you don’t care about anything, this isn’t what neutrality is to me. Neutrality is about moving beyond the divisive tools that pull us out of clarity. Moving beyond things like race wars, gender, pride, patriotism, political sides, religious beliefs shaping how we see events. It means going back to seeing yourself as a human, connected to everyone and everything. Heck, quantum physics and emerging science supports the very fact that we are inherently connected to everything ad thus connected to oneness – that oneness is neutral in that it does not define itself by emotions and beliefs.

At the moment, many black feel fed up with how they are treated in the United States – and they very well should be. I can’t tell you how often someone might deal with a racial prejudice because I am not them, but I am sure it happens. On top of that, people all over the world have become completely fed up with a system of mass oppression that backs billions of people into a corner, and they have had enough of it.

What was the coronavirus lockdown? It was an overreaching lockdown about a virus that is not dangerous. It took away rights, freedoms, and free speech. It collapsed economies and will strip billions in wealth from the people. This event too boiled tensions.

This systemic collective oppression goes beyond countries, it’s a coordinated effort that affects countries all over the world. I feel like what we are seeing right now is the boiling over of all of these tensions within people, partly fueled by media narratives, and partly fueled by the deep knowing that we live in infrastructural systems that are designed to enslave and oppress the masses everywhere.

These are systems run by an extremely small portion of the population that do not have humanity’s best interest at heart, ad who are being exposed at a record rate this past year. Often called conspiracy theories, people’s knowledge about who the deep state is and how it functions is growing rapidly as we enter into a crucial phase of awakening I call Breaking The Illusion. It’s where we begin to note that the world doesn’t work the way we thought it does. We begin to see that our education systems, media and politicians have been fundamentally lying to us about almost everything.

But before we get into anger and hatred about that fact, let’s recall the next step of awakening I call Awakening Neutrality. This is where we begin to see that this doesn’t have to be a fight to perpetuate more oppression, but instead a decision to see what’s happening, and move beyond it without needing those oppressive systems to do all the change for us. It’s about choosing love ad action from love, vs simply getting angry and wanting a fight or revenge.

The Choice Is Ours

In my eyes, we are living in an epidemic of disconnection. An epidemic of division. Depending on the day of the week, we put on a new hat as to how we divide ourselves and on what issue. We don’t look at one another as humans. We don’t see the beauty and the love that we all have, we are instead trained to see all of our difference, and to focus so heavily on them that they overtake how we identify as beings.

The more we buy into the social engineering of today, the more we buy into hate and division – not love. We are then left deeply confused, all while thinking we are informed. This happens because we’ve become addicted to a fast-paced society where we are coaxed into getting stuck in a literal biochemical state where we cannot think clearly or function properly. We get trapped in our sympathetic nervous system and literally stay in stress mode all the time. It arouses our emotions, clouds our thinking and moves us into danger/survival mode… even when there isn’t a threat.

What type of world will this create? How will we thrive in a world like this? How will people act in a state like this? How will police act in a state like this? One literally cannot gain clarity from this state. And yet from this state we are making decisions, passing judgments, voting, and engaging in trying to make change. All of this from a position where we are emotionally out of touch with reality and unclear in our minds. Again, what type of world will this create?

I write this and cannot say I’m clear on what we should do. I don’t know how to stop police from disproportionately killing black people just as I am not sure how to get them to stop killing people in general. I can say we need to be more loving, more connected, and begin seeing that which unites us. I can say stop listening to mainstream media, messages of hate, and to not fall for the social conditioning of elites who are engineering a full-scale society of mass oppression, but will we consider that? Will we add to our own thoughts to the table? Will we engage in important discussions from a place of oneness instead of just our perspective?

That I believe is on us… because government and mainstream media sure as heck isn’t going to offer anything of value to this conversation. It’s time for the people to unite, become self-responsible, grounded in love, and organize.

A YouTuber by the name of Young Pharaoh shares some interesting insights on why narratives are shaped the way they are in these cases.

Our Biology Responds To Events Before They Even Happen

In Brief

The Facts:

Multiple experiments have shown strong evidence for precognition in several different ways. One of them comes in the form of activity within the heart and the brain responding to events before they even happen.

Reflect On:

Do we have extra human capacities we are unaware of? Perhaps we can learn them, develop them, and use them for good. Perhaps when the human race is ready, we will start learning more.

Is precognition real? There are many examples suggesting that yes, it is. The remote viewing program conducted by the CIA in conjunction with Stanford University was a good example of that. After its declassification in 1995, or at least partial declassification, the Department of Defense and those involved revealed an exceptionally high success rate:

To summarize, over the years, the back-and-forth criticism of protocols, refinement of methods, and successful replication of this type of remote viewing in independent laboratories has yielded considerable scientific evidence for the reality of the (remote viewing) phenomenon. Adding to the strength of these results was the discovery that a growing number of individuals could be found to demonstrate high-quality remote viewing, often to their own surprise… The development of this capability at SRI has evolved to the point where visiting CIA personnel with no previous exposure to such concepts have performed well under controlled laboratory conditions. (source)

The kicker? Part of remote viewing involves peering into future events as well as events that happened in the past.

It’s not only within the Department of Defense that we find this stuff, but a lot of science is emerging on this subject as well.

For example, a study (meta analysis) published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience titled “Predicting the unpredictable: critical analysis and practical implications of predictive anticipatory activity” examined a number of experiments regarding this phenomenon that were conducted by several different laboratories. These experiments indicate that the human body can actually detect randomly delivered stimuli that occur 1-10 seconds in advance. In other words, the human body seems to know of an event and reacts to the event before it has occurred. What occurs in the human body before these events are physiological changes that are measured regarding the cardiopulmonary, the skin, and the nervous system.

A few years ago, the chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Dr. Dean Radin, visited the scientists over at HearthMath Institute and shared the results of one of his studies. Radin is also one of multiple scientists who authored the paper above. These studies, as mentioned above, tracked the autonomic nervous system, physiological changes, etc.

Twenty-six adults experienced in using HeartMath techniques and who could sustain a heart-coherent state completed two rounds of study protocols approximately two weeks apart. Half of the participants completed the protocols after they intentionally achieved a heart-coherent state for 10 minutes. The other half completed the same procedures without first achieving heart coherence. Then they reversed the process for the second round of monitoring, with the first group not becoming heart-coherent before completing the protocols and the second group becoming heart-coherent before. The point was to test whether heart coherence affected the results of the experiment.

Participants were told the study’s purpose was to test stress reactions and were unaware of its actual purpose. (This practice meets institutional-review-board standards.) Each participant sat at a computer and was instructed to click a mouse when ready to begin.

The screen stayed blank for six seconds. The participant’s physiological data was recorded by a special software program, and then, one by one, a series of 45 pictures was displayed on the screen. Each picture, displayed for 3 seconds, evoked either a strong emotional reaction or a calm state. After each picture, the screen went blank for 10 seconds. Participants repeated this process for all 45 pictures, 30 of which were known to evoke a calm response and 15 a strong emotional response.

The Results

The results of the experiment were fascinating to say the least. The participants’ brains and hearts responded to information about the emotional quality of the pictures before the computer flashed them (random selection). This means that the heart and brain were both responding to future events. The results indicated that the responses happened, on average, 4.8 seconds before the computer selected the pictures.

How mind-altering is that?

Even more profound, perhaps, was data showing the heart received information before the brain. “It is first registered from the heart,” Rollin McCraty Ph.D. explained, “then up to the brain (emotional and pre-frontal cortex), where we can logically relate what we are intuiting, then finally down to the gut (or where something stirs).”

Another significant study (meta-analysis) that was published in Journal of Parapsychology by Charles Honorton and Diane C. Ferrari in 1989 examined a number of studies that were published between 1935 and 1987. The studies involved individuals’ attempts to predict “the identity of target stimuli selected randomly over intervals ranging from several hundred million seconds to one year following the individuals responses.” These authors investigated over 300 studies conducted by over 60 authors, using approximately 2 million individual trials by more than 50,000 people. (source)

It concluded that their analysis of precognition experiments “confirms the existence of a small but highly significant precognition effect. The effect appears to be repeatable; significant outcomes are reported by 40 investigators using a variety of methodological paradigms and subject populations. The precognition effect is not merely an unexplained departure from a theoretical chance baseline, but rather is an effect that covaries with factors known to influence more familiar aspects of human performance.” (source)

The Takeaway

“There seems to be a deep concern that the whole field will be tarnished by studying a phenomenon that is tainted by its association with superstition, spiritualism and magic. Protecting against this possibility sometimes seems more important than encouraging scientific exploration or protecting academic freedom. But this may be changing.”
– Cassandra Vieten, PhD and President/CEO at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (source)

We are living in a day and age where new information and evidence are constantly emerging, challenging what we once thought was real or what we think we know about ourselves as human beings. It’s best to keep an open mind. Perhaps there are aspects of ourselves and our consciousness that have yet to be discovered. Perhaps if we learn and grow from these studies, they can help us better ourselves and others.

In Brief

The Facts:

A global online summit featuring doctors, scientists & activists addressing the health concerns of 5G technology and what people can do about it is set to take place the first week of June and it's free to sign up.

Reflect On:

Why are safety concerns that've been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals called a "conspiracy theory?" Why is this idea ridiculed? Why don't our federal health regulatory agencies simply to some health safety testing before rolling it out?

Some of the world’s leading scientists, doctors and activists are gathering for a free online summit that begins on Monday June 1st and will run for approximately one week. The summit will dive into the health concerns of 5G technology, and why it’s a concern and what people can do about it. The summit is completely free to sign up and watch, and you can do so here.

We’ve also put together an E-book titled “Is 5G Safe? An Easy to Understand Guide” summarizing the published peer-reviewed research that is raising concerns about electromagnetic radiation that’s emitted from our favourite wireless devices, cell phones and more, as well as novel 5G technology. It’s a great resource that you can share with family or friends who desire to look at the proof, research, evidence and concerns that thousands of doctors and scientists have been and are creating awareness about all over the globe. We wrote it in language designed to be simple and factual.

Once you sign up for the summit, you get access to the free E-book.

It’s quite strange that any researched journalist could dismiss the health concerns of 5G technology, as well as 4G and 3G, when there are nearly 10,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies that raise cause for concern. A study published in 2019 in Frontiers in Public Health is one of many that raises concerns about 5G technology, explaining how there is no safety testing, and that in vivo and in vitro studies regarding this type of technology and it’s predecessors have shown that it’s harmful to human health, even at levels below current “safety” limits.

At the end of the day, whether you believe this type of technology is safe or you don’t, would it not be in the best interests of everybody to have the technology go through some type of required safety testing? Shouldn’t any technology that has any sort of biological effect be put through safety testing? Why has there not been any safety testing?

In December 2018, US. Senator Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Representative Anna G. Eshoo (CA-18) sent a letter to FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr seeking answers regarding potential health risks posed by new 5G wireless technology. At a hearing, that took place last year, Blumenthal criticized Carr for failing to provide answers, and did the same thing to other industry representatives that were in attendance for not putting the technology through safety testing. You can watch a clip of that hearing and read more about it, here.

How can our federal health regulatory agencies approve products that are clearly a cause for concern?

This is why the summit is going to be such a great resource. It will answer many questions, and again, let people know what they can do about it!

Sign up for the free 5G Summit starting June 1st. Hear from 40 of the world’s leading experts on the subject, all FREE! Click here to register now!